Entrepreneurs hear it all the time. We’ve been guilty of saying it.
You have to grow your business to be a BIGG success. You have to scale.
No you don’t.
You don’t have to build something large.
You don’t have to hire employees.
You don’t have to go public.
Listen to this post. Click a player to hear George & Mary-Lynn on The BIGG Success Show Podcast.
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BIGG success is life on your own terms. If you’re fulfilled with the size and shape of what you’re doing, all is good…as long as you’ve thought about three things your business must give you.
Before we get into them, we should note that we’re really focusing on the financial side of your business in this discussion. So you won’t hear warm and fuzzy terms. Just the basics.
And we should emphasize another point:
Your business won’t just give these things to you.
You’ll have to work hard to get them.
With all that in mind, here are the three things your business must give you:
Enough money today
This is the obvious one. Assuming it’s a full-time endeavor, your business has to provide you with enough money to sustain your standard of living.
But what’s not so obvious, perhaps, is that you need to be able to sustain your standard of living in the future too. Your costs will increase. Your business must give you enough money to meet these future costs.
If you don’t want to work more, you must have the ability to charge your customers more in the future when your costs increase. Otherwise, you’ll have a lower standard of living in the future.
Replacement customers
No matter how well you serve your customers, you are likely to lose one from time to time.
Hopefully, your churn rate is really low but almost every business experiences some customer turnover. You’ll need to find new customers to replace old customers who do less business with you or no business at all.
Otherwise, you won’t have enough money today. Your income will fall. So it’s important to continue marketing your business, to continue networking, no matter how busy you are right now.
Enough money tomorrow
Even if you are a solopreneur, you need an exit plan.
You may reach a point where you don’t want to work. You may reach a point where you can’t work.
Your business must give you enough money so you can set aside something for tomorrow.
The three “do somethings”
At a minimum, your business must give you the lifestyle you want for now and the future. If it doesn’t, you have three choices.
We’ll call them “do somethings”.
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Do something more
Grow your business by doing more for your existing customers or getting more customers.
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Do something additional
Is there another business, perhaps related, that would give the extra something you need. Or could you get a part-time job to fill the gap between what you need and what you’re taking in now.
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Do something else
Sometimes you just have to accept that it’s not going to work. Be realistic. But be careful that you don’t give up too early. BIGG success usually comes with a price. You will be required to push yourself beyond what you thought were your limits if you want to reach it.
But you’ll grow so much personally and professionally in the process. And that’s what will lead you to BIGG success!
What do you want your business to give you?
Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00740_092911.mp3
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